Utilizing Technology in Language Assessment
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UTILIZING TECHNOLOGY IN LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT
INTRODUCTION
Most people associate technology with efficiency. Accordingly, applied linguists might consider technology in language assessment by discussing ways in which it streamlines the testing process. Indeed, much progress can be identified with respect to this worthwhile goal, as many language tests today are delivered on microcomputers and over the Internet. An equally important strand of language assessment concerns its effects on language learning, language teaching, and knowledge within the field of applied linguistics. The story of technology in language assessment, therefore, needs to encompass both the efficiency of technical accomplishments, which is evident in part through the success of testing programs in constructing technology-based tests, as well as the effects of these tests. Technology can encompass a broad range of devices used in the testing process, from recording equipment, statistical programs, and data bases, to programs capable of language recognition (Burstein, Frase, Ginther, and Grant, 1996). However, here the focus will be on the use of computer technology for delivering tests and processing test takers’ linguistic responses because these are the practices with the most direct impact on test takers and educational programs. The use of computer technology in language assessment is referred to as Computer-Assisted Language Assessment or Computer-Assisted Language Testing (CALT), two phrases that are used interchangeably. E A R LY D E V E L O P M E N T S
Early developments in computer-assisted language assessment consisted of a few demonstration projects and tests used in university language courses. Many of these were reported in two edited collections, Technology and Language Testing (Stansfield, 1986) and Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Testing: Research Issues and Practice (Dunkel, 1991), but others had been published as journal articles before or in the same time period as these. Three important themes were prevalent in this early work. One was the use of a psychometric approach called item response theory (Hambleton, Swaminathan, and Rogers, 1991; Lord, 1980), which provides a means for obtaining robust statistical data on test E. Shohamy and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 7: Language Testing and Assessment, 123–134. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
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CAROL A. CHAPELLE
items. These item statistics, obtained from pre-testing items on a large group of examinees, are used as data by a computer program to help select appropriate test questions for examinees during test-taking. Item response theory, which offers an alternative to calculation of item difficulty and discrimination through classic true score methods, entails certain assumptions about the data. The use of these methods, the assumptions they entail, and the construction and use of the first computer-adaptive tests comprised the major preoccupation of the language testers at the beginning of the 1980s. This
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